


Something to Consider

by Skylark



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Affection, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, College, Crushes, Family Dynamics, Gen, Grandparents & Grandchildren, Minor Jake English/Dirk Strider, Mother-Son Relationship, POV Alternating, POV Second Person, Pets, Pre-Slash, Protectiveness, Questionable HarleyEnglish Parenting Methods, Technology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2014-03-23
Packaged: 2018-01-16 18:37:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1357771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skylark/pseuds/Skylark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No-SBURB AU. Jake invites Dirk home for spring break during their first year of college, where Dirk rapidly develops a respect for the phrase “Like grandmother, like grandson.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something to Consider

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lir/gifts).



> Prompt: "I'd like something where, for whatever reason -- no-game modern setting, canon divergence, whichever explanation is cool -- all of the alpha kids and their guardians are living in the same time period. Focusing on Grandma Jade's relationship with her grandson, preferably in which she takes a bit of an over-protective mamma bear approach to raising him, especially when it comes to That Dirk Strider. I'd really, really love to see Grandma Jade interacting with Dirk directly! Bonus points for her seeing right through his crush on Jake and getting in his face about it."
> 
> Title is from ["Problems" by Mother Mother.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=artn9fErRp8)

Jake's car is less of a jeep and more of a jalopy, mud-spattered with questionable stains on the interior and a mysterious clanging beneath the seats that your fingers itch to repair. Not that you can hear it right now, though: you've been bouncing down this rough dirt road for miles, and Jake has to shout to be heard over the banging and shaking.

“I can't wait for you to meet my grandma, Strider!” he's telling you. “Don't you fret, she's a fine and upstanding woman. The cat's meow. The bee's knees! You're in for a real treat.”

“I don't know,” you yell back. “Some of her care packages were pretty intense.”

He throws his head back with a laugh and you lunge forward to rest a cautionary hand on the wheel. The effort of trying to hold it steady numbs your hand, and another bump jolts the breath from you. Jake became mysteriously deaf the last two times you asked him to slow down, though, so you won't bother asking a third time.

“College is the first time I've been away from home,” he shouts. “Grandma was just making sure I didn't want for anything. She's always taken such good care of me, you know!”

“Jake, she sent you _guns.”_

“Right you are, a dashing pair of Beretta M9s. Some of my favorites!” he shouts back, and you just shake your head. “You'll love her!” he continues. “When I talked to her last night she said she couldn't wait to meet you.”

“I bet,” you say. “Jesus, Jake, will you pay attention to the road?”

“Don't get your knickers in a twist, Strider, I've driven up and down this lane since I was ten,” he tells you. “It's a regular cakewalk! I bet I could do it with my eyes closed.”

“Don't test that,” you say, but you're overrun by his shout of joy.

“There's the old homestead!” he says, clapping you on the shoulder. “Golly, it feels good to be back.”

You look up. And up. The house you'll be staying in for the next seven days is a ramshackle vine-swathed mess of steel and concrete towering nearly as high as the ancient trees that surround it. “Holy shit,” you breathe.

\---

Your grandson has never been one for subtlety, you think, lying on the roof with the trees casting shifting shadows across your back. You may be old, but there's nothing wrong with your hearing, especially since Jake is roaring up the road like that! You'll have to talk to him about it later, or at least make sure that if he's going to sacrifice surprise, he has the speed and strength to back it up.

It isn't long until you have a visual lock. You flatten yourself as much as possible, feeling the gravel on the roof dig into your stomach, and your hands are steady on your rifle as you look down the sight, tracking him. Through the scope you can see Jake laughing. The boy next to him looks a little pale, one hand white-knuckled on the steering wheel—you frown a bit at that.

The jeep comes to a stop in front of the house in a dissipating cloud of smoke, close enough to the building that the roof of the car obscures him from your view. Jake kills the engine, but doesn't step out. _Good boy,_ you think.

Aside from the swishing of the air through the trees and the occasional snatch of birdsong, it's quiet, very quiet. Your breath shallows, your hands tightening around your weapon.

“Jake—” you hear his friend say, his voice carrying through the rolled-down windows.

“Shush!” he hisses. “Quick, give me your soda can.”

“What? I'm not done with—”

“Quit your bellyaching and just hand it over!”

After the sounds of a short tussle, Jake tosses the can out of the car and high into the air. Obligingly, you take aim and fire. In an instant the can crumples, spraying soda as it falls.

By the time you look back to the car, Jake has already crossed the short distance to the house and is scaling up the outside of it, leaping onto the lowest balcony and jumping between the hanging vines. Your shots chip the stone and clang off of the metal of the building's edifice until he's too close and you have to switch to a shorter-range weapon.

When you take aim again, you're pleased to see that his friend has also joined the fray, leaping after Jake at a speed almost too fast to see. A metal blade glints in one of his hands.

Jake swings wide on a vine to get an angle on you and returns fire, and you squint as you feel the breeze from its passing over your shoulder. “Is that the best you've got?” you shout, and he grins, close enough now that you can see the sweat beading on his forehead. At last he lunges over the edge of the roof and tackles you, sending you toppling as your last shot goes wild.

“Grandma!!” he shouts, right in your ear.

“Jake!!” you shout back with equal delight, grabbing his face in your hands and pressing a kiss to his grime-smeared forehead. “Welcome home!”

A few moments later a shadow falls over the both of you. You look up to see Jake's friend, breathing hard and looking bewildered with a katana clutched in his right hand.

“You must be Dirk,” you say. “It's nice to meet you, though you should know better than to bring a sword to a gunfight!” You sit up and extend a hand, your other arm still protectively curled around Jake's shoulders.

He swallows, and you can tell even through his ridiculous sunglasses that he's squinting at you. Then he mutters, “Um. Yeah,” and returns your handshake. He only stumbles a little when you use his grip to heave yourself to your feet, and you can feel the strength in his frame despite how skinny he is. Jake gets up a moment later, brushing dirt and gravel from his legs.

“Call me Grandma,” you tell him. “Are you hungry?”

\---

Jake isn't exactly tall, but even he stands taller than his grandmother by a few inches, and you dwarf both of them by nearly half a foot. You hardly notice, though, because behind her coke-bottle lenses is a gaze so sharp that it glues your tongue to the roof of your mouth.

It's not hard to see the family resemblance, even disregarding the brown skin and identical noses and buckteeth. Like Jake, Grandma doesn't keep still unless something demands her attention. She navigates around the cheerful clutter that passes for the dining room with the same sort of easy physicality that he has, even though she must be at least in her sixties from some of the stories he's told you. She talks rapid-fire with her grandson about his college courses—thermodynamics, from the sound of it, eventually migrating to nuclear physics specifically—and grabs cups and plates without regard for how easily they might break. The sense of barely-organized chaos that she gives off is slightly dizzying. You sit quietly at the table and try not to get in the way.

“So, Dirk!” Grandma says as Jake places silverware in front of you. Her voice cracks like a whip and your back snaps straight automatically. An instant later you slouch harder than before. “I hear you're an engineer, too. What focus?”

“Electrical,” you say. You force down the impulse to add “ma'am” after, because you don't think it'd do you any favors and you're not that kind of guy, anyway.

“Jake tells me you're at the top of your class.”

You nod; there's no reason to be shy about it. Facts are facts. “I build my own robots,” you say. “Mostly humanoid, though I've recently been working on creating an AI.” You outline the basics of your program; nothing fancy, just enough to show that you know what you're talking about. You don't want to show your full hand just yet.

She grins, placing lunch on the table before you. It's sandwich materials—cold cuts, cheese, lettuce. _“Interesting,”_ she says, drawling out the first syllable. “Seeing as you're such good friends with my boy, are you considering a job at Skaianet after you graduate?”

You shrug. “Make me an offer.”

Her laugh is patronizing and it makes you frown. “Don't get ahead of yourself, buster,” she tells you. “Come back when you have a degree! I don't just let any old robot-building kid into my company.” She waves a finger at you. “Only the best! Freshman courses are easy, you know.”

“I _know,”_ you say, a little petulantly, and Grandma chuckles. Jake flops into the chair to your left and she takes a seat across from you.

“So do something about it!” she says. “Jake, pass the bread.”

She tucks into lunch with as much relish as her grandson, and their earlier conversation picks up where it left off. You spend the rest of the meal frowning at your plate.

\---

If you had to describe your grandson's friend in a word, you suppose you'd use “harmless.” He's so easy to see through! He seems so _young_ with how desperately he tries to seem mature, how he uses secrecy and arrogance as screens to hide behind. It might fool his classmates and maybe some of his teachers, but you've seen it before and from better actors than him. Still, he doesn't seem like a bad kid, and it's not hard to tell that he's head over heels for your grandson with how he dogs his every step and looks genuinely irritated when you pull him away to show him to his room. You have a hard time disliking people who like your Jake, on principle.

“Bathroom's the third door on the right, and your towels are on the bed,” you tell him. “Feel free to help yourself to the food in the fridge, but there are some experiments in there so pay attention to the post-its or you might make yourself sick! They're color coded,” you add helpfully. “Besides that, make yourself at home! If you need anything, just ask.”

“Thanks,” he says, starting his laptop.

His computer uses a heavily modified variation of Gentoo Linux but it doesn't phase you; your own system is far more obtuse, seeing as you built it yourself. It was the basis for the Linux distro you use in all of Skaianet's systems now (which uses a variant of the JSON License, saying that it can't be used for evil or by Crockercorp and its subsidiaries—which are synonymous, but your lawyers have told you that specificity is important!). Every now and then you still enjoy working with your cantankerous prototype system just for the nostalgia value.

You lean over Dirk's shoulder to type the wi-fi password in. When he's seen it and nodded, you hit “Connect.” As it logs in you ask, “So how long have you liked Jake?”

He turns so red that you can't help but laugh. “I—” he splutters.

“Don't start! I know it when I see it. Have you told him yet?”

“No, it's really not like that,” he insists, looking at you out of the corner of his eye before he drops his gaze to his lap. “Jake's a one-man whirlwind, always moments away from touching down and ruining the lives of thousands of innocent hard working farmers in the Kansas heartland. I'm just looking out for him. Keeping him out of trouble.”

Your eyes narrow. “Keeping him out of _trouble?”_ you repeat, straightening to your full height. Dirk stiffens at the irritation in your voice. “My grandson is _more_ than capable of taking care of himself! He's been roughing it outside and helping me with my experiments since he could sit on my knee!”

Dirk pushes his chair back and turns so that he can look up at you. Even though his cheeks are still fire engine red and he's clearly a little lost by the sudden turn this conversation's taken, he meets your gaze squarely. You give him a few points for courage, though that isn't enough to put him back in the black with you. He is nowhere near the black right now! He is totally one hundred percent in the red. Nobody talks poorly about your grandson and gets away with it.

“Jake's a walking disaster area,” Dirk says slowly, as if he's trying to explain a hard concept to you. “Since we've become friends I've been in more near-death situations than I've been in my whole life, and trust me, that's saying something. To be honest, I don't know how he got on without me.”

You chew on your tongue, scowling at him. “So you're his big bad protector, are you?” you say. “You don't look like much of one to me!”

His chin tilts up. “I can take anything that either of you could dish out,” he says. “Just try me.”

“Fine!” you snap. “You're on.”

\---

You wake to the sound of gunfire.

“Rise and shine, Jake!” Grandma's strident voice is clear even through the closed window. “You too, Dirk! Time's a-wasting!”

You stumble downstairs to find Jake grabbing an axe and wandering outside, rubbing sleep from his eyelids. “Jake?” you call after him.

“Chopping firewood,” he mumbles. You hurry after him, trying to get his attention before he hurts himself—you've told him a hundred times to leave the sharp-edged weaponry to you, seriously—but the moment you step past the threshold of the house you're sideswiped by a monstrous white blur of fur and teeth.

You shout and scrabble for your strife specibus, but by the time your katana is in your hand the beast has released you. You sit up, shades askew and your clothes already streaked with dirt, to find Grandma standing over you. The grin on her face makes your stomach turn to ice. A huge white dog sits beside her with a nearly identical grin, excepting the addition of a long pink tongue that lolls out of the side of its mouth. It's the largest dog you've ever seen, reaching higher than her hip and possibly even your own. _Dog_ isn't a big enough word for it. _Jabberwock,_ maybe, or something from _Where The Wild Things Are._

“Meet Sir Edmond Halley the Second!” she says. “You can just call him Halley.”

You've heard about this dog, now that you think about it. Apparently it had as much of a hand in raising Jake as his grandmother did, which at the time explained a lot about his eating habits.

“Where are your manners?” Grandma scolds, and you're not sure if she's talking to you or the dog. “Halley, shake!”

Its paw nearly dwarfs your hand. You swallow hard.

“Come on, up and at 'em,” she says, hauling you upright. You don't even get a chance to dust off your clothing before she's dragging you deeper into the forest, Halley trotting happily beside you both. “You've got a long day ahead of you!”

“I do?” you say, turning to glance behind you just in time to see the huge house vanish from sight.

“Absolutely! I actually let you two sleep in a little,” she says, “but if you start now you should be able to finish the course by nightfall, maybe even a little earlier if you hurry. You should hurry, by the way! The woods can get exciting after dark. Then again,” she squints back at you, “you're tough enough to protect my _poor helpless grandson,_ so a few wild monsters should be no problem for you, right?”

“Uh,” you reply eloquently.

“Right!” she says, and lets go of you. You stumble but manage not to run into her back because your reflexes are awesome. You are awesome. You can definitely handle whatever she's got in store for you.

“Jake's run various iterations of this course since he was a toddler!” she's saying. “Now he can do this whole thing easy as pie, though, so if you're going to protect him, you should at _least_ be able to handle as much as he can. Halley will keep you from straying too far off the path—” On cue, the gargantuan creature bares its teeth at you— “but the rest you'll just have to figure out yourself. I hope it goes without saying that there are a few surprises along the way, so stay on your toes!”

You scan the woods around you, and at the edge of your line of sight you can see a bright green marker painted onto the bark of a tree. That's where you're headed, you guess. You check your shades and find that you still get reception out here, which means you can at least tell which way is north using your GPS, and create a map of the course as you go.

You take a deep breath. Your brother's put you through weirder shit than this, you remind yourself. This is like that time the two of you decided to go camping, only on steroids. You can do this. You can do this.

“The first part's a race,” she continues. “If you can get to the last green marker before Halley does, you'll get access to an easier part of the course! If he beats you, though, you'll have to take the harder route.”

“A _race?”_ you say, feeling a crash of relief. “I don't know if Jake told you this, but,” you make a show of rolling your shoulders, “I'm pretty fast.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You don't say,” she says. From her tone it's clear that she's just humoring you, and you smirk at her. It doesn't matter how big her mutt is; you're going to leave it in the dust. “Are you ready to start?”

You check yourself over quickly: sneakers, strife specibus, shades. “Hell yeah,” you say.

She grins at you. “All right! Ready, set—go!”

Beside you, Halley lunges forward. You even allow it a one-second head start before you take your first flashstep, the world around you blurring. For a moment you feel lighter than air, your feet barely touching the ground—

And then you trip over a root and fall flat on your face.

Ten yards behind you, Grandma bursts into laughter. “Good luck!” she shouts. “You'll need it!”

Halley galumphs past you as you crawl to your knees, spitting out loam.

“Fuck,” you snarl.

\---

By the time you return to the house, the sun's risen enough so that the world's no longer cast in shades of gray. Not that you need the extra definition, of course! You know these woods like the back of your hand. It's not the only house you own, but both you and Jake agree that it's your favorite, which is why you decided to spend the week here.

This place hasn't seen much use recently, because you've spent a the past few months running back and forth between Skaianet's corporate headquarters and Washington D.C.. Crockercorp's special interest groups have been trying to force through all sorts of legislation meant to make it harder for you to stay in business. Luckily, the proposals could affect a lot of companies, not just your own, so you've been able to exert an equal amount of pressure in retaliation both through media outreach as well as through speaking directly to congress. You're glad to take a week off to spend time with your grandson and focus on your own projects, though! It's almost like the way your life was when you were younger, when it was just you and Jake (and later, Halley) making a home together.

As you step through the back door and take off your boots, you find that Jake's already brought in the wood he chopped that morning and started a fire in the old stove. It's nothing compared to the elaborate heating system you have installed, but Jake has long insisted that he wants to have the most authentic cabin-in-the-woods experience possible, and you've never seen fit to stop him. You take a moment to stand beside the stove and enjoy the warmth spilling from it, and when he beams proudly at you, you smile back.

“Where's Dirk?” he asks.

“He's doing a little training on the course,” you tell him. There's no reason to tell him about how rude his friend's been! You'll take care of it yourself.

His eyes widen. “Golly, that sounds like fun! Do you think he'd mind if I tagged along?”

“No!” you say quickly, and Jake cocks his head at you, curious. “It's something he has to do himself.” Jake nods, understanding immediately. You always knew you raised a clever boy. “Anyway, it's the first full day of your first spring break! What are you going to do with it, Jake?”

“I thought I'd partake in some good old-fashioned gardening!” he says. “I'd bet a penny that the greenhouse has seen better days since we've been here last, and I've a right mind to go liven the place up. I found a bunch of flower seeds that are local to my university and I thought they might thrive with a little TLC. Perhaps you can even keep a few blossoms in your lab!”

The idea of keeping some of Jake's flowers close at hand cheers you. “That sounds like fun!” you say. “I was thinking of catching up on some gardening myself. Do you think there'll be enough room in that old greenhouse for the two of us? You're so big now, after all.”

“Aw, Grandma, I'm not that tall,” he says with a shy smile.

You frown at him. “Yes, you are!” you correct him. “I always hoped that my grandson would grow up to be tall and handsome, and you're both.” He ducks his head shyly, and you put an arm around him in a loose hug. “Let's tackle the greenhouse together after breakfast. Between the two of us I bet we can have the whole place cleaned up in a jiffy!”

“Breakfast?” he says, perking up, and you chuckle because he's still a teenage boy, after all, with certain priorities.

“How about waffles?”

“My favorite!” he cries, as he always does.

You putter into the kitchen and Jake follows you, chattering about this and that as you crack eggs and measure vanilla. After you left the clutches of the batterwitch you hated cooking for a long time, but that changed once Jake sailed into your life. Fearful of the pre-packaged food on the grocery shelves, never sure what was tainted by the old witch's far-reaching claws, you took to growing your own ingredients and teaching yourself how to cook—first baby food, then bite-sized meals, then full suppers. You're a fair hand at it now, able to whip up a stir fry with the most domestic of housewives, but in the beginning it was an arduous few years of struggling to map your chemistry skills onto the kitchen. Jake ate everything you put in front of him, though, and the relish with which he devoured it and thanked you for every meal taught you, too, to enjoy eating again.

The waffle batter you've made is your very own recipe, one of the first ones you were really satisfied with. The iron you're using to make them is one of Skaianet's best-selling products, with a changeable middle section that stamps various patterns in the center—atoms, dog heads, flowers. The waffles you give Jake are adorned with the skull-themed Skaianet logo, and he tucks into them almost before you've set the plate onto the table. You chuckle at his eagerness and run a fond hand through his hair.

“Love you!” you say.

“I love you too, Grandma!” he replies through a hearty mouthful, his eyes sparkling. You slide him the bottle of syrup before turning back to make some waffles for yourself.

\---

You thought you were good at building robots, but this strifebot is something else. Its eyes glow red and its chest glows with a neon green SN symbol, and it's _fast,_ dodging your moves and clipping you more than once. It's bristling with claws and blades, and goes as easily on four legs as it does on two.

You feint, and your muscles scream as you pull back at the last minute. Its fist whizzes past you and sinks into the dirt, presenting you with a split second opening. You make the most of it, ducking down and checking your footing in the mud before you whirl around and up with a high strike that separates the robot's head from its body.

It twitches, exposed wires sparking, and you leap outside of the radius you estimate its self-destruct will affect—but it doesn't explode. Instead it takes a step towards you, clumsy but still functional.

“Shit,” you hiss. You flashstep behind it but its upper torso spins to face you, leaving its legs and feet planted. Before you can land your next blow a metal fist socks you right in the solar plexus and you stumble back, wheezing. You look up to see it raising an open hand towards you and—“Fuck!”—tumble to dodge a flurry of bullets. You don't know if it's lethal ammunition or rubber tipped, and to be honest you're not real excited to find out.

“Of course it's ranged,” you mutter to yourself. “Goddamnit.” Hearing your voice, it turns towards you again. Before it can fire you leap high in the air over it, and your next slice carries you down clean through the middle of the strifebot. _That's_ when it explodes without giving you enough time to get clear, and the shock of it slams you against a tree trunk hard enough to see stars.

For a minute you just lie there, panting. Light flickers through the tree branches and across your closed eyelids, the sun already past its zenith. You've been cutting your way through traps and weird puzzle shit for hours, but the end of the English Deathcourse Extravaganza still isn't anywhere in sight. You wonder, briefly, what the easier path would have been like, and make a sound of disgust. Fuck this forest, you think to yourself. Fuck your life. No person is worth all this pain and torture, no matter how hot they are. Then again, you have to admit, this stopped being about Jake a long time ago.

“Good heavens, Strider,” a familiar voice says. “Now's hardly the time to take a snooze!”

Speak of the devil. You try to make a witty repartee, but all that comes out of your mouth is a groan.

Jake's laugh is as merry as ever, and you kind of want to punch him for it but you're too tired to move. You can hear him coming closer and kneeling beside you. “Looks like you've been taken to the cleaners,” he says, softer.

His hands deftly check for wounds and bruises. Occasionally he makes you wince, but mostly his touches are light, gentle, and you relax a bit. His grandma isn't going to send more murderbots after you while her precious grandson is with you, or if she does at least he has the ranged weaponry to deal with them. The thought of being reliant on Jake English, of all people, makes your stomach do a nervous reflexive flop, but you're honestly too exhausted to give a shit.

“This sucks,” you finally manage. Jake chuckles.

“It _is_ a bit rough,” he says. “I can get through it fairly quick these days, but Grandma hardly even breaks a sweat when she gives it a go! It's like she has eyes in the back of her head.”

Eyes in the back of your head. If you installed cameras into the points of your shades, you could expand your peripheral vision, or see behind you—that's a great idea, it would cut the problems you've had today practically in half. You make a mental note to modify your shades once you get back to proper civilization.

Jake has pulled a collection of supplies out of his sylladex. “Here,” he says, pressing a sports drink into your hand, and you gulp it down while he tends to your wounds. “You're in rather good shape, by my estimation,” he says. “Color me impressed! Then again, I don't run the harder course these days unless I'm up for a real challenge.”

You think back to this morning, where by the time you got to the finish marker Halley had fallen asleep on top of it. “You can _outrun_ that monster?”

“It's easy!” he tells you. “Mercy me, look at the size of this gash you've got. Hold still.” You hiss as he pours water over the cut to rinse it clean. “What was I saying? Oh, yes, Halley. All you have to do is play fetch! Just keep throwing sticks and he'll stay busy enough for you to get to the finish line with oodles of time to spare.”

“Fetch,” you repeat numbly, watching as he dabs your injury with antibiotic ointment and winds gauze around your arm. The thought didn't even occur to you. You kind of want to die.

“Well, he _is_ a dog, after all. What dog doesn't love tricks? Didn't Grandma show you his shake?”

“That was a _hint?”_

“There are lots of hints!” he replies, wetting a cloth and patting your forehead with it. “Haven't you been paying attention to the solutions of the puzzles and the positioning of some of the markers? They spell out a word, you know! Well, assuming you know Latin, which you do, of course, what self-respecting adventurer wouldn't! Anyway, that's the password.”

“The password to _what?”_

“The underground crypts!” Jake says, as if it's obvious. “How do you think I got here? You don't think I went through all those traps just to see how you were doing, did you?”

You lick your lips. “No way,” you say, sounding hollow. “That's ridiculous, who would ever think that.”

He laughs. “I thought so. You really had me worried there for a minute! Anywho, if you've had quite enough of this, supper's in an hour or so. I came to fetch you. Can you walk?”

“Yeah,” you say. “I just need a minute.”

He clicks his tongue at you. “I'll take that as a no,” he says, then rubs his chin thoughtfully. After a moment, he snaps his fingers. “I've got just the thing! How about a good old-fashioned piggyback ride?”

You can feel your face heat. “No. No way, bro. I can definitely get back by myself. You don't need to—”

Your protests, as usual, fall on deaf ears.

Your legs are so much longer than his that you have to tuck your feet back to make sure your shoes don't scrape against the tunnel's concrete floor. His arms are locked around your thighs securely, though, and he shows no sign of tiring or asking to put you down.

You bury your face in his shoulder, feeling embarrassment burn through you. “I thought you were bad,” you say into his shirt. “But your grandmother is on an entirely different level.”

“My grandmother is a saint,” Jake pronounces. “An absolute angel. There is no better woman on this earth, excepting perhaps Spider-Girl.”

“Spider-Girl isn't real,” you mumble. The underground crypt is cool and dark, and against your better judgment you can feel yourself relaxing now that the danger has passed. When you peer over his shoulder you can see that his hands are dusted with soil and seeds, which is somehow not surprising at all.

“Exactly!” he says. “That's why Grandma is the best woman in the world without contest.”

You want to protest, but you don't even have enough energy to keep your eyes open. In the next moment, you're asleep.

\---

All right, you'll admit it, you're impressed. Dirk was never in any _real_ danger—Jake told you that his guardian had given him some training of his own, and if he got into trouble Halley would have helped—but you didn't expect him to last anywhere near as long as he did. Regardless, you hope Dirk has learned a lesson! Your grandson is more than capable of taking care of himself. You made sure of that, because you had to.

Dirk stays in his room the following day, apparently recovering. You spend time in your lab putting the finishing touches on the new motherboard you've been designing, but by mid-afternoon your eyes hurt from all the time you've spent squinting at your computer screen. You're just not as young as you used to be, and you could probably use a break. “Jake!” you call down the stairs. “Grab your pistols! Let's do a little target practice.”

“Hooray!” you hear him shout back. You pull your rifle out of your strife specibus and grin at its familiar weight on your shoulder. You step onto the transportalizer in the center of your lab and you're downstairs in a moment.

The rhythm of calling the pull, firing the clay pigeon into the air, pressing the trigger, and watching the target shatter is comforting to you. When Jake's with you he only shoots one pistol at a time, trying to impress you with his marksmanship (he's a very good shot! You're very proud of him), but you know that he still dual-wields his guns when he's practicing on his own. You don't stop him, because who knows! Perhaps one day he'll actually master the art of aiming two weapons at once. You've always told him that anything is possible if he puts his mind to it.

When the two of you become bored with shooting simple targets you start showing off for each other. Jake's got a few new tricks! College has been good for him. You don't have any new ones yourself—you've been so busy lately that you've only spent time on the most important skills—but you practice shooting while blindfolded, which is a skill you honed when you were young and one Jake loves.

When you're tired, you slip the blindfold from your eyes to Jake's applause. You see a glimpse of movement out of the corner of your eye, and looking up reveals the curtain in Dirk's window fluttering as he ducks out of sight.

You shake your head. There's no need to be shy! “Dirk!” you holler. The curtain stays stubbornly still, so you cup your hands around your mouth and yell again, louder. Jake joins in too, and soon the two of you are making quite a racket!

At last Dirk opens his window. _“What?”_

“How are you feeling?” you shout.

“Well, I'm not dead or being attacked by robots or jumping through fiery hoops,” he says, dry. “So that's a start.”

You put your hands on your hips and laugh. “That's what I like to hear! If you think you're up to it, how about we all go to the lake tomorrow?”

“The lake!” Jake echoes beside you. “Oh boy! Let's go, Dirk, I'll show you all of my favorite places and you'll just love it!”

You grin upwards. It's an expression you learned in your childhood, too wide with too many teeth, the only way in which you resemble the alien that raised you. You can see his throat bob as he swallows, but nevertheless he considers you with his shaded poker face, refusing to quail. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Sounds like fun.”

Jake cheers and runs toward the house, presumably to get ready. “Don't forget to take care of your weapons!” you call after him.

“I won't!” he answers over his shoulder before he disappears inside. Dirk is still watching you from the window, and after a long moment, he nods at you. You nod back, and he vanishes behind the curtain.

You're starting to see why your grandson likes this kid.

\---

The next day finds you in Jake's beaten-up jeep, squashed into a corner of the backseat by a large cooler and a collection of towels because Halley is taking up the entirety of the trunk. Grandma is driving and Jake fiddles with the radio until it's blasting rock. He's wearing clip-on shades and his grandmother is wearing ridiculously oversized sunglasses that cover her spectacles, and there isn't a shred of irony between them.

You grew up with the ocean as your closest body of water, so the glass-like stillness of the lake's surface is strange to you. It doesn't last long, however, because the second the car comes to a stop Jake tumbles out and sprints towards the shore, hooting and shedding clothing as he goes. You try not to stare, and fail.

When you catch yourself, you find Jake's grandmother watching you in the rearview mirror. You scowl and huddle down further into the seat. Halley's wagging tail thumps against the car floor so hard that you can feel the vibrations rattling through the back of your chair. “I'll get the supplies,” you say.

“I'll help!” she responds, stepping out of the car and coming around to the trunk. The moment she swings it open Halley, too, is a blur of motion towards the water. “You're our guest, after all.”

You snort at that, and her answering smile is unapologetic.

While Jake splashes around in the water with Halley, the two of you drag the supplies down to the edge of the lake and set up. The shore is a dark mud-like sand that's broken up with rocks and twigs. It hardly compares to the long sandy beaches you're used to, but Grandma sprawls across a large flat stone with a sigh of satisfaction.

“Come on, the water's fine!” Jake shouts.

“I think I'll wait,” you say. It's very early in the morning and you know for a fact that the water must still be ice cold. Jake's enthusiasm shields him from the chill (as it shields him from most other things), and the dog has enough fur that it apparently doesn't care, but personally you're not interested in joining the polar bear brigade.

Still, you're not sure where to set up shop. Grandma has taken the best perch in the area, and you don't want to lie down on sharp rocks or wet sand. You busy yourself with setting down the cooler while you work at the problem, and by the time you straighten, you see that she's spread an orange towel on the rock beside her own.

You frown a little. Is she still out to get you? It didn't seem like it after yesterday, but you're never really sure when adults are fucking with you. Well, that's a lie. Adults are fucking with you all the time, but the thing is that Jake's grandmother only seems to fuck with you sometimes, and it's throwing all your calculations off.

You're jerked out of your thoughts by the sound of her rough chuckle. “You're going to have frown lines when you're older!” she says, then pats the orange towel. “Come on, I don't bite. We never really got a chance to talk.”

You just stare. She raises an eyebrow at you; looks like she's not going to repeat her offer. You glance around, but there's really nothing in the area to offer you a reprieve from this.

So you sit.

She doesn't say anything once you're next to her, though, and you roll your eyes. She started this, so she's the one who can start the conversation. You fold your arms and turn away from her, watching Jake do the elementary backstroke, his arms never breaking the water. Halley is paddling after him with a stick in his mouth.

Your ear catches the soft sound of Grandma pulling something from her sylladex, and when you look she's reading something on the thinnest tablet you've ever seen. It has Skaianet's symbol stamped on the back, so maybe it's a prototype. Your curiosity prickles, but you press your lips together, refusing to say a word.

Ten minutes later you've seen her tablet do at least seven things you didn't think were technologically possible, especially with the space limitations inside such a thin case. Where did she get parts that were that small and _that powerful?_ Your curiosity is destroying you. She is going to kill you with your own brain. This is the worst week of your life.

“What is it?” you finally burst out, hands clenched into fists in your swim trunks. The smile she turns upon you is fucking _beatific._

“This is the latest in our skulltablet line! It's just a prototype, though.” You bite down a flare of satisfaction because you totally called it. “Do you want to try it?” And just like that she _hands it to you_ —top-secret Skaianet tech that her rivals would kill to have five seconds with—like it's nothing.

You're not sure how much time passes as you test its limits. Every now and then she explains something unprompted about whatever feature you're playing with. When you start to ask questions of your own, her answers are quick and forthright. She leans towards you to swipe her fingertips across the tablet and show you things it can do, capabilities you hadn't even thought of. 

You really enjoy working with handheld devices, small robots, and other types of small tech, the challenge of coaxing more out of less, but you rarely get to exchange ideas with anyone. Roxy's brilliant but she specializes in software while you focus on hardware, Jake as a mechanical engineer doesn't have the same area of interest, and your fellow students can't really keep up with you. It's so thrilling to be able to _talk_ to someone like this, a person who knows more than you, someone you can learn from.

“This is amazing,” you say. “Do you know what I could _do_ with a processing chip this powerful?”

“Run an AI, probably!” she says, and you're startled that she didn't forget.

\---

Your grandson spends the afternoon exploring the caves on the other side of the lake with Dirk and Halley, and you work on practicing your front crawl. You're an excellent swimmer—the old witch wouldn't have had it any other way—and while you don't enjoy being in the water, you also never let any useful skill to go waste.

On the way home, you and Jake sing along loudly with a song on the radio, and you see Dirk's hand drumming the beat on his armrest. “Do you play an instrument?” you ask him.

“Not like you mean,” he says. “I rap and DJ.”

“Not bad!” you say. His mouth tightens, but before he can say anything Jake starts belting the chorus and drowns out all attempts at conversation.

The drive back stays with you through to the next day. You haven't played music in a while, and after lunch you pull your old eclectic bass out of your sylladex. Jake goes running once he sees it in your hands and comes back downstairs with his own instrument.

Jake didn't inherit your voice or your ear. That might be your fault in part, but you spent your childhood chained beside the piano while your brother played your accompaniment, and when Jake didn't show any particular aptitude for singing you were the last person in the world who was going to force him. It's something you think about sometimes, but he uses his voice in other ways to bring cheer to a room and keep himself company, so you don't often dwell on it.

In your younger days you spent a few years in the punk rock scene, buzzing your hair short and picking up the bass guitar, going to shows and floating in and out of bands, screaming songs about revolution. Even after your company became successful enough to take up all of your attention, music still meant change, drive—reclaiming things once taken from you—and when Jake came into your life you made sure that his childhood was full of music. He tried the bass like you when he was little but he didn't enjoy it the way you do, and when he discovered a flute in the attic you encouraged his interest. “The flute takes up less room in the sylladex!” he says. “It's travel sized, and an excellent fit for adventuring troubadours everywhere.”

You run a testing hand across the eclectic bass's strings, and Jake joins you on the rag rug between piles of your discarded projects and computer parts. When you lay down a groove he plays a melody over it, the same Beastie Boys song the two of you were listening to in the car. You laugh, and Jake waggles his eyebrows at you, and soon you're shouting the lyrics to _Sure Shot._ You haven't had a music jam in _such_ a long time!

A few songs later you see Dirk hovering in the doorway, and you realize that you're probably making enough noise to be heard from the roof. Good thing you live in the middle of the forest! You hope he wasn't trying to take a nap, though.

You wave at him; “Come join us!”

He doesn't at first, silently watching you and Jake play. You've almost forgotten that he's there when a rhythm comes in under your playing. You look up to see that Dirk's got hands cupped around his mouth, and you grin.

He has some skill as a beatboxer! That doesn't surprise you, though. He likes to switch things up as he goes, syncopated tempos or different sound effects, testing you. Your fingers fly across the double necks of your bass guitar and you keep up, sometimes adding in a few surprises of your own. You might be old, but that doesn't mean you don't have any tricks up your sleeve!

Later, Jake and Dirk break into a beatbox-flute-off and you can't sing straight for how hard you're laughing. When you have to throw in the towel—your throat's starting to ache, as are your joints—you feel a real sense of regret.

\--

It's your last day at casa de English, and you spend most of it in Jake's room with both of you on your computers. It's a lot like being back at college since you're always visiting each other's dorms.

Grandma is distracted at lunch. She writes long equations on the tabletop with the moisture of the water ring left by her glass, and occasionally tries to use her knife like a fork. Whenever she moves her hands your attention is caught by the columns of multicolored rubber bands on every finger. “She's got her thinking cap on,” Jake whispers loudly to you, as if you couldn't figure that out by herself. “'Do not disturb!' Come on, let's load the dishes into the scrubbifier.”

In the evening you find her sitting outside by a small campfire. She looks up when you come close enough and smiles. “Hi Dirk!” she says, but she doesn't seem inclined to say more than that.

You sit down across from her. The temperature is dropping as the sun goes down, and you're glad for the heat source between you. The fire lights Grandma's face softly from below, deepening the kindly wrinkles around her eyes and the firm, stubborn set of her mouth. Her gaze seems far away as she thinks about—all sorts of things, probably, robots and business ventures and the whirling arcs of stars. You want to ask, but you don't. This is the quietest time you've had all week and you're grateful for it, for the heat at your front and the dark coolness at your back. You won't be the first to destroy it.

There's a disparity in her expression that you've noticed over the past week. Her mouth is almost always turned up in a grin, and her mood is easy to read on her face, but her eyes don't always sync up. Instead, they're always penetrating, always assessing. You wonder what she sees in Jake—what she sees in you. You find yourself wondering if you measure up, and then you realize that her opinion has become important enough to you that you care about the answer. Somehow, you've come to respect her. There are very few people who you respect in this world, and the sensation of it is a little alien to you.

After some time the fire pops, and her eyes refocus on your face. She shakes her head as if she's waking herself up, and you ask, “Done for the day?”

“Yup! I think I got everything to work.” She stretches, and you see that the rainbow-colored forest on her fingers has thinned considerably. “It's been a good week. Very productive! How about you, Dirk? Did you have fun this week?”

You think about it. “Not really,” you say honestly, and she chuckles. 

You shift words around in your head, trying to find the exacting phrase that will best communicate what you mean, and she doesn't hurry you. “I'm glad I visited, though,” you say, which is the best you can come up with. “I think I learned a lot.”

Her responding grin is immediate. “Glad to hear it!” she says. “You're an interesting kid. Your guardian's done a good job with you.” The praise makes you look away, glad for your shades. “I was thinking,” she says, “but if you don't have anything better to do over the summer break, you should come visit us again! I've got an research lab on an abandoned island in the Pacific, you know. It's very exciting!”

“Exciting,” you say, feeling a now-familiar prickle of dread.

“Oh yes!” she says, nodding. “There's all sorts of ruins and what looks to be some awesome alien technology that I've been meaning to explore, but I just haven't had the time. It's where I work on my most ambitious projects! They're also the most dangerous, you know. Jake helps a lot but it'd be useful to have another pair of hands around! There are monsters too,” she says, almost as an afterthought.

_“Monsters?”_

_“That's_ what you focus on? Not the technological advances or the alien ruins?” She tsks at you, grinning. “You're such a stick in the mud, Dirk Strider! Where's your sense of adventure!”

You bite back a retort because if this week has taught you anything, it's that you should think before you speak. “I'd be glad to come,” you say instead. “In fact, I can't think of anything better that I could possibly do with my summer than spend it fighting off monsters and having constant near-death experiences in the name of science. I'm more raring to go than Halley when he spots one of your famous broiled steaks. My body is fucking ready. Let's do this.”

Grandma throws her head back and laughs. “That's the spirit! We'll make a proper scientist of you yet.”

She beams at you, and for the first time this week, you smile back.

\--

The two of them leave early in the morning, because it'll take almost the full day for them to get back to their college. You and Jake squeeze each other hard for at least a minute, and you only break apart when Dirk gives an awkward cough. You stand in the middle of the dirt road and wave goodbye until the only thing remaining is the dissipating cloud of dust in their wake.

It's quiet without a pair of teenagers in the house! You've still got Halley, though, padding with you from room to room and lying at your feet as you put the finishing touches on the metal frame you're welding. The robot you've been working on has no less than six arms (perfect for playing your eclectic bass), can lift more than twice its weight, and is capable of short periods of flight as well as poaching eggs (which is something that you have real trouble with)! You've spent months working on the weight distribution and necessary programming, and you'll have to strife (and cook, and jam) with it later as a final test, but you've got a good feeling about this one! It's a winner. You can just tell.

You send a few e-mails, make a few phone calls, and double-check on the watering and fertilizing program you wrote for the greenhouse over the week. There's no reason your plants should languish while you're away! It had slipped your mind the last time you were here, but you had the time this week. You think you might even be able to turn it into a new product with a little tinkering.

Halley barks, and you glance up at the clock. “Thanks!” you say, patting him on the head. “We'd better get going, right?”

Packing's a snap! With a little thinking you manage to shuffle your sylladex so that all your supplies fit, including your new robot and a few of Jake's flowers. With a last fond glance around the house, you set your large sun hat on your head and step outside. The door automatically locks behind you and your security systems activate. No one will be bothering this place while you're away, not if you have a say in it!

It's about a mile walk through the forest with Halley loping at your side, and then you find yourself at the edge of a large concrete platform. A few minutes later you hear the rising thunder of blades, and you shade your eyes to watch the white helicopter land in the center of the helipad. A skull is emblazoned on the tail.

You jog towards your ride, one hand on your head to keep your hat from flying, your skirt flapping in stiff breeze. “You're late!” you shout once you've pulled yourself inside. Halley leaps in, settling himself on his doggie bed in the back as you clamber to the front and pull your headset on.

“Sorry, ma'am!” says your co-pilot. “Did you have a good week?”

“The best!” you yell back. You scan the panels in front of you and settle your hands on the controls. You guide the helicopter up and away, and soon you're flying back to Skaianet HQ. You're excited to get back to work! But you're looking forward to the summer, too, when you can explore Hellmurder Island with Jake and Dirk.

“So much to do!” you murmur to yourself, smiling as the house fades to an invisible dot in the distance behind you.

**Author's Note:**

> A sincere thank you to my lovely kind betas [Ketsu](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Ketsu), [Blacktail](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/blacktail), and [axolotlsGambit](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/axolotlsGambit).


End file.
